Failings of three largest nations: Hausa-Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba

Recently, a group of younger academics asked me to contribute a chapter to a book they were writing together on the travails of Nigeria. After much thought, I decided to write a chapter on the failings of our three largest nations (Hausa-Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba) – the failings of theirs that have contributed decisively to the failure of Nigeria as a country.

As I worked on my chapter, I found that I could not make the needed statement conclusively without including the role of the British – the founders and colonial moulders of Nigeria – in the picture. To trace Nigeria’s failure, one cannot avoid an account of how the British designed and built Nigeria to stumble and fall. So, I had to delve into how the four major nations in Nigeria’s history – the British, Hausa-Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba – contributed to the making of Nigeria’s failure.

Though the British had ruled Nigeria since 1914, it was not until 1946 (the years following the Second World War of 1939-45) that they seriously began to build Nigeria as one country. And as they embarked on the task, certain powerful conditions directed their choice of policies. The British economy and British cities had been ruined by the war; the cost of rebuilding was enormous; Britain was in heavy debt; and the danger of national bankruptcy was real. Though Britain must prepare for Nigeria to become independent (because of the pressure of nationalism in Africa and the world), Britain must depend quite considerably on help from Nigeria and her other colonies – but especially on Nigeria, her largest and richest colony. In fact, the potential capability of Nigeria to help was greatly being increased by the knowledge that Nigeria was an oil-rich country.

Britain must therefore find ways to hold on to the Nigerian economy after Nigeria’s independence. And that meant, simply, that Britain must put the control of independent Nigeria in the hands of a “friendly” Nigerian people. The Yoruba and Igbo were too educated and too world-wise to be depended upon for such a role. On the other hand, the Hausa-Fulani were far less educated, were fearful of being dominated by the Yoruba and Igbo, needed British help, and were therefore more amenable for friendship with the British. The outcome was that the British guided Nigeria into a federation of three regions in which the Northern Region ruled by the Hausa-Fulani had more population than the Igbo-dominated Eastern Region and the Yoruba-dominated Western Region together. This easily translated to Northern dominance in the federal parliament, and Hausa-Fulani dominance over the Federal Government. Nigeria’s future was sealed.

As Nigeria entered into independence, then, the Hausa-Fulani rulers of Nigeria had to be focused on one central mission – to subdue and rule the other peoples of Nigeria. Sir Ahmadu Bello spelt it out succinctly: we Hausa-Fulani must ruthlessly prevent our loss of the control of the Federal Government; we must never let the others unite; we must treat them like conquered peoples; and we must never let them control even their own affairs or their own future. And, for sure, the Hausa-Fulani have made an admirable success of that mission – ruling Nigeria more or less continuously for nearly 50 years, entrenching their men in the Nigerian military and in nodal positions in the federal bureaucracy and judiciary, suppressing virtually all local drive and morale, and successfully selling to most other Nigerian elites the mentality that the Hausa-Fulani are the source of all power, authority, opportunity, and wealth in Nigeria.

But, unfortunately, such a mission as that has nothing to do with building a harmonious country; or a politically stable country with democratic aspirations; or a modern country with a modern economy based on modern technologies. Nigeria bogged down into a politically and economically chaotic and obscure country, a land of strenuously crooked and contentious politics, of comprehensive corruption and generations raised in corruption, of poverty, hopelessness, insecurity and vileness. Can this monstrosity of a country change and improve? Well, nothing is impossible. But some things are beyond the power of man to ameliorate – even with the best of good intentions. Unfortunately, even the tiniest rudiments of good intensions are not easy to discern in Nigeria even now. It is always easier to drag down than to raise up.

The Igbo and Yoruba together commanded the capability to change the situation. Both were led into independence by some of the most educated men in the world. But to effect worthwhile change, they needed to join hands and work together at it – and that they have proved incapable of doing even till this day. In the mushrooming chaos and cloud, the Igbo political and bureaucratic elite developed a nebulous doctrine of “Igbo dominance”, and even promoted the idea of a unitary government for a brief while. Accepting a subordinate placement in the Hausa-Fulani-dominated federal government, in order to outpace their Yoruba rivals, became for them a fanciful existential philosophy. They also fed to the large numbers of simple decent Igbo folks who were spreading out to take advantage of the opportunities in other parts of Nigeria a mindset that, since Nigeria was all theirs, they owed their hosts anywhere in Nigeria no gratitude or even ordinary politeness for any favours. Professor Adiele Afigbo, in my view one of Nigeria’s best historians of our times, took some look at this mindset – and concluded with a note of caution for his Igbo kinsmen. Thus, one of the most outgoing, one of the most modernizing, of Nigerian peoples, rather than becoming a factor for unity and modern progress in Nigeria, became the most painful casualty of the Nigerian disaster.

The modern Yoruba political elite came onto the Nigerian scene with a solid cultural heritage that could have contributed enormously to the building of a successful Nigeria. Living for over a thousand years in well-ordered kingdoms and cities had imbued the Yoruba with strong sensitivities for orderly governance and leadership. From the late 1940s, their elite came forth with clear ideas that the various peoples of Nigeria, large or small, should be respected, that Nigeria should be organized as a federation, and that Nigeria’s peoples should be the basis for the federating units. In their Western Region in the 1950s, they became the pace-setters in democratic politics. But the Yoruba message has never had the effect that it could have had. And the reason is that, in Nigerian politics, the Yoruba have never found sufficient unity among them to make their great message accepted by others.

Unhappily, these tendencies continue to direct Nigeria’s life, as well as the ongoing National Conference. The vibrations from the National Conference are that the Hausa-Fulani want to continue to dominate and therefore oppose any change; that though the Yoruba and Igbo basically seek the same lines of change, they shy away from working emphatically together; and that though the Yoruba bring their great message of orderly and progressive federalism, they do not seem to know for sure how to wrap up, in their own ranks, the kind of forceful unity that would sell the message to all. The question must continue therefore to be asked: Is this country a viable entity?

Clear-headed dissection and analysis of WHERE the rain started to beat us. Many people especially the YOUNG generation NEED to know WHAT happened to project Nigeria, pre and post independence. Thank you for a brilliant analysis